Study Tools

Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

Context

Character List

Anne’s diary begins on
her thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942,
and ends shortly after her fifteenth. At the start of her diary,
Anne describes fairly typical girlhood experiences, writing about
her friendships with other girls, her crushes on boys, and her academic
performance at school. Because anti-Semitic laws forced Jews into
separate schools, Anne and her older sister, Margot, attended the
Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam.

The Franks had moved to the Netherlands in the years
leading up to World War II to escape persecution in Germany. After
the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940,
the Franks were forced into hiding. With another family, the van
Daans, and an acquaintance, Mr. Dussel, they moved into a small
secret annex above Otto Frank’s office where they had stockpiled
food and supplies. The employees from Otto’s firm helped hide the
Franks and kept them supplied with food, medicine, and information
about the outside world.

The residents of the annex pay close attention to every
development of the war by listening to the radio. Some bits of news
catch Anne’s attention and make their way into her diary, providing
a vivid historical context for her personal thoughts. The adults
make optimistic bets about when the war will end, and their mood
is severely affected by Allied setbacks or German advances. Amsterdam
is devastated by the war during the two years the Franks are in hiding.
All of the city’s residents suffer, since food becomes scarce and
robberies more frequent.

Anne often writes about her feelings of isolation and
loneliness. She has a tumultuous relationship with the adults in
the annex, particularly her mother, whom she considers lacking in
love and affection. She adores her father, but she is frequently
scolded and criticized by Mr. and Mrs. van Daan and Mr. Dussel.
Anne thinks that her sister, Margot, is smart, pretty, and agreeable,
but she does not feel close to her and does not write much about
her. Anne eventually develops a close friendship with Peter van
Daan, the teenage boy in the annex. Mr. Frank does not approve,
however, and the intensity of Anne’s infatuation begins to lessen.

Anne matures considerably throughout the course of her
diary entries, moving from detailed accounts of basic activities
to deeper, more profound thoughts about humanity and her own personal nature.
She finds it difficult to understand why the Jews are being singled
out and persecuted. Anne also confronts her own identity. Though
she considers herself to be German, her German citizenship has been
revoked, and though she calls Holland her home, many of the Dutch
have turned against the Jews. Anne feels a tremendous solidarity
with her aggrieved people, and yet at the same time she wants to
be seen as an individual rather than a member of a persecuted group.

During the two years recorded in her diary, Anne deals
with confinement and deprivation, as well as the complicated and
difficult issues of growing up in the brutal circumstances of the
Holocaust. Her diary describes a struggle to define herself within
this climate of oppression. Anne’s diary ends without comment on
August 1, 1944,
the end of a seemingly normal day that leaves us with the expectation
of seeing another entry on the next page. However, the Frank family
is betrayed to the Nazis and arrested on August 4, 1944.
Anne’s diary, the observations of an imaginative, friendly, sometimes
petty, and rather normal teenage girl, comes to an abrupt and silent
end.

Otto Frank is the family’s sole survivor, and he recovers
Anne’s diary from Miep. He decides to fulfill Anne’s wishes by publishing the
diary. Anne’s diary becomes a condemnation of the unimaginable horror
of the Holocaust, and one of the few accounts that describe it from
a young person’s perspective.

Since Anne’s diary is a true personal account of a life
in hiding, it is inappropriate to analyze it as a novel or other
work of fiction. Parts of the diary were intended for public view,
but others clearly were not. To appreciate and interpret the diary,
it is necessary to consider its horrible context, World War II and
the Holocaust, before any discussion of plot development or thematic
content.